God's providence seems now to be moving upon the spiritual chaos,
preparing it for the reception of light. Obstacles to the introduction
of the gospel into benighted regions are fast giving way. The kingdoms
spread beneath the sun, from north to south, from China to the farthest
verge of the west, are seemingly in the posture of waiting for
evangelical instruction. The Macedonian cry is coming up from the four
winds. It is made to the church, the sacramental host of God's elect;
and _they must answer it_.

God appoints, in some respects, special duties to different ages and
nations. It was the peculiar mission of European Christians in the
sixteenth century to break the yoke of papal supremacy; of England in
the time of Cromwell to waken those notes of ecclesiastical and civil
freedom which are still reverberating among the mountains of Europe, and
shakings dynasties; of our fathers to achieve the political independence
of the United States,--to plant the genial tree of liberty, and water it
with their blood. Now what does the providence of God indicate as the
special ministry of the church in the present age? It is written all
over the face of the world. We learn it in the awakened condition of
heathen, barbarous, and half-civilized countries; in the stir of
intellectual energy which is sweeping over the kingdoms, jostling
thrones and alarming monarchs; in the tottering pillars of corrupt
religions, and of long-established institutions of iniquity; in the
progress of governmental science in connection with political liberty,
and the extension of the arts of civilization; in augmented facilities
for traveling, together with increased efforts for education, and the
consequent quickening of mind; in the degradation of those "who know not
God," the wants of seamen, of the oppressed, of the spiritually
destitute both in our own and other lands, and in the charitable
movements of the times. All these seem to declare unequivocally that